June 24, 2006

In Memoriam: Julian David Baumert

Julian David Baumert, a Brookhaven physicist working on the cutting edge of research on liquid surfaces and thin organic films, died of melanoma on June 24, 2006. He was 31.

Described as dedicated, bright and caring, Baumert was a relatively new research associate in the Soft-Matter and X-ray groups in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department. "Julian was an exceptionally talented, hard-working young researcher, who loved his work," said colleague John Hill. "He understood his research at a deep level and it was always a pleasure to ask him what he was working on and hear his clear, precise, and enthusiastic explanations of his latest results and what they meant. It is such a tragedy to lose him so early in his life and in his career. We will all miss him immensely."

Julian Baumert

A native of Molfsee, Germany, Baumert was educated at the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics (IEAP) at the University of Kiel and the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, where he studied a compound known as methane hydrate, which is found naturally on the sea floor and is a major worldwide energy resource. His thesis focused on the structure and dynamics of this compound using neutron and x-ray scattering techniques and numerical simulations. Baumert obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel in February 2004, receiving the prestigious "Familie-Schindler Foerderungs-Preis" of the Faculty of Science in Kiel.

"He was a very cheerful person," said colleague Oleg Gang. "We deal with so many difficult and complicated things here, but he created this atmosphere around him where everything was positive."

Baumert came to BNL in July 2004 and conducted his research at beamline X22 of the National Synchrotron Light Source, where he was part of a team of scientists learning to make smaller and more powerful molecular-scale circuit components that could someday make electronic devices more efficient. He was the principal investigator on a paper published in February 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that described the first measurements of the structure of a molecular junction at buried interfaces. He was working to elucidate how the structural and electrical properties of these molecular junctions depend on the molecular coverage.

"He had such great promise to be an extremely successful scientist," said Ben Ocko, who hired Baumert into his research group. "He was easy-going and friendly, and exhibited a high level of creativity, great skills as an experimentalist and the ability to explain complex phenomena in simple and elegant terms. He had such a bright future ahead of him."

In the past year, Baumert was diagnosed as having skin cancer and underwent extensive treatment. That didn't stop him from continuing his research at Brookhaven. "Even when his health deteriorated, he continued to come to the Lab daily to work on experiments and to discuss science with his colleagues," Ocko said. After an operation last summer, Baumert continued his scientific research including travel to the Advanced Photon Source last December to investigate how "surface freezing" modifies the capillary wave spectrum at the surface of long-chain alkane molecules using a technique called x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy.

"It was really amazing how he dealt with it," said Baumert's office mate and colleague Masa Fukuto. "He must have known the odds were against him, but he was courageous to the very last minute. He never lost hope."

A resident of Sound Beach, Julian Baumert is survived by his wife, Maren; his parents, Ingrid and Jürgen; and his sisters, Anna and Sophia. Donations in his memory may be made to the Melanoma Research Foundation, 24 Old Georgetown Rd., Princeton, NJ 08540.

ARTICLE BY: Kendra Snyder